Hillary Clinton was asked to comment: “I thought the cultural performance was fascinating,” she cooed.

Pressed again on Ortega’s vitriol, Hillary replied: “To have those first-class Caribbean entertainers all on one stage and to see how much was done in such a small amount of space. I was overwhelmed.”

Thus the nation that won the Cold War, contained the cancer of Castroism in Cuba, liberated Grenada, blocked communist takeovers of Guatemala and the Dominican Republic, and poured scores of billions in aid into this region was left undefended by its own leaders at the Summit of the Americas.

Nor was this the only unanswered insult. Hugo Chavez, who has called Obama an “ignoramus” and Bush “El Diablo,” walked over to a seated U.S. president and handed him the anti-American tract Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent.

The book blames Latin America’s failures on white Europeans.

It opens, “Renaissance Europeans ventured across the oceans and buried their teeth in the throats of the Indian civilizations.”

Civilizations? Before Pizarro and Cortez, the Inca and Aztec empires these conquistadors overthrew were into human sacrifice.

Evo Morales, the Aymaran president of Bolivia, who is using the race card against Bolivians of European descent, implied a U.S. role in an assassination plot against him.

Argentina’s Cristina Kirchner, who allegedly received black-bag money from Chavez, ripped into America for its role in the 1980s. Under Reagan, America aided Britain in the Falklands War, after the Argentine junta invaded the islands, and assisted the Contras in their war of national liberation to oust Ortega’s Sandinistas.

Again, Obama offered no defense of his country.

President Lula da Silva of Brazil, who blames the world financial crisis on “white, blue-eyed bankers,” told Obama that any future Summit of the Americas without the Castro brothers was unacceptable.

Perhaps Obama believes in turn-the-other-cheek diplomacy, though it is hard to find much success in history for such a policy. Perhaps pacifism is in his DNA. Perhaps he shares the indictment of America that is part of the repertoire of every Latin demagogue.

Whatever his motive, in Trinidad, there were not two sides to the story. There were the trashers of America on the Latino left and a U.S. president who wailed plaintively, “I’m thankful that President Ortega did not blame me for things that happened when I was 3 months old.”

But, the Bay of Pigs, had it succeeded, would have given Cubans 50 years of freedom instead of the brutal dictatorship they have had to endure. And it took place four months before Barack was born.

Obama’s silence — signifying, as it does, assent — in the face of attacks on his country is of a piece with the “contrition tour” of his secretary of state.

“Clinton Scores Points by Admitting Past U.S. Errors,” was the headline over Saturday’s New York Times story by Mark Landler:

“It has become a recurring theme of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s early travels as the chief diplomat of the United States: She says that American policy on a given issue has failed, and her foreign listeners fall all over themselves in gratitude.

“On Friday, Mrs. Clinton said … that the uncompromising policy of the Bush administration toward Cuba had not worked. …

“The contrition tour goes beyond Latin America. In China, Mrs. Clinton told audiences that the United States must accept its responsibility as a leading emitter of greenhouse gases. In Indonesia, she said the American-backed policy of sanctions against Myanmar had not been effective. And in the Middle East, she pointed out that ostracizing the Iranian government had not persuaded it to give up its nuclear weapons ambitions.”

Sandler wrote that Hillary brought to mind Bill Clinton:

“On a single trip to Africa in 1998 … Bill Clinton apologized for American participation in slavery; American support of brutal African dictators; American ‘neglect and ignorance’ of Africa; American failure to intervene sooner in the Rwandan genocide of 1994; American ‘complicity’ in apartheid … .”

Yet, as C.S. Lewis reminds us in “God in the Dock,” “The first and fatal charm of national repentance is … the encouragement it gives us to turn from the bitter task of repenting our own sins to the congenial one of bewailing — but, first, of denouncing — the conduct of others.”

Bewailing the policies of Bush as failures and standing mute in the face of attacks on his country and predecessors may come back to bite Obama.

For when Jimmy Carter assumed a posture of moral superiority over LBJ and Richard Nixon, by declaring, “We have gotten over our inordinate fear of communism,” it came back to bite him, good and hard.

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21 Responses to The Apologists

PJB signals that 50 years of national apology may now need to seek some balance.

Listen, everyone within and without our borders:

We fed you, we educated you, we made you safe, we propped up your economic situations. We exported our technology, our blood, and our treasure. For ALL our sins, these pale in comparison to the good that America has done.

America begins to contemplate rising from it’s rags and ashes. Many of those of us who didn’t vote for Palin, instead voted to allow Obama to put the capstone on American decline. May the reaction begin soon.

American pride diminishes no person, and no country, and no race, except those who choose envy and hatred for themselves.

Pat is taking this silly nonsense too seriously. The Cold War is over and Mexico’s problems are a bigger threat to our security than Chavez, Ortega, et al.

Chavez is a violent, corrupt buffoon; the fall of his country will occur within five years. Ortega, Kirchner and Morales are even worse. How could anyone take them seriously? The President responding to a bottle blonde bimbo Peronist? Give me a break.

Lula can prattle on all he likes about the Castros. In the end, he won’t press it because he knows his “emerging market” depends on El Norte as do the rest. And he knows he doesn’t have the juice to make the US do anything.

While Clinton is too humorless to make a good jab, it seems to me that Obama treated these silly speeches (in a useless summit) about right. I’m surprised his comment on Ortega wasn’t simply “it gave me a chance to catch up on my email.”

I think Pat may have failed to consider that Hillary’s comments can appear to be wonderfully, slyly snarky. E.g. “Pressed again on Ortega’s vitriol, Hillary replied: ‘To have those first-class Caribbean entertainers all on one stage and to see how much was done in such a small amount of space. I was overwhelmed.’”

Not ordinarily considered nice in diplomatic terms to describe other countries’ leaders as “entertainers” and it can seem to both convey to us how lightly she took them, and to them that she regards it all as just theater on their part for their constituents.

And even then Obama’s comment about Ortega’s speech being “about 50 minutes long” can seem of the same stripe. E.g., “that’s the only thing I really noticed about it.”

You go using verbal sledgehammers against flies and oftentimes all you’ve done is flattered the flies into believing they are so important and impressed your audience about how seriously you take the flies. Sometimes needles are far more effective.

I’m from Iran, and I know those kind of leaders you mentioned quite well. After all we have plenty of them (one is Ahmadinejad). Believe me, these people live and feed on attention. They would have rejoiced much more if Obama or Clinton had openly admonished them. They could go feasting with that for weeks and months. Ahmadi-nejad, such a miserable failure in any respect, benefited so much from the harsh criticism and ridicule he underwent in Columbia University!

There is no one in this world whom I abhor more than Castro. But do you have any doubt that the present policy of the USA has only empowered him, impoverished Cubans even more (though the real culprit is Castro himself), and has helped the myth of Castro to continue? Don’t you see the plain fact that it was during Bush presidency that the Latin America went Left so much? As much as I like Obama and other liberals, I don’t see them wrong in this issue.

I think what matters to Obama is substantive policy decisions and not symbolic acts. Therefore it makes complete sense to listen to Ortega or shake hands with Chavez. What matters is the policy not the gesture.

Our nation seems to have lost its moral center into absolutist extremes.
The US should never sit and be insulted at the Conference of the Americas nor should we blindly and publicly profess apologies and sins without context.
Yet, instead of focusing on the real fears of gay marriage and the real moral responsibilities of homosexuals…we have blanket acceptance versus blanket condemnation.
Yet instead of focusing on real concerns of hedge, derivatives, credit cards, credit options, mortgages, etc…we perform a blanket bailout or a stark avoidance “let them fail” without regress for where exactly is the moral center for justice, disclosure, etc.
Yet instead of focusing on the real concerns of immigration, international trade, offshoring, outsourcing, resource depletion, renewable energy, etc. Again there is no moral argument of rationality and responsibility.
THIS IS WHAT HIGH BROW LIBERALS CREATED IN DEMONIZING THE REPUBLICANS AND THE REPUBLICAN BACKLASH OF DEMONIZING THE LEFT. OBAMA IS JUST AS EXTREME AS BUSH BUT MORE CONTRITE AND CLOAKED WHERE BUSH WAS DENSE AND OVERT.

THE NATION AND ITS CITIZENS ARE PAYING THE PRICE FOR POLARIZED EXTREMISM.

Mr. Buchanan, I’ve read you and watched you for years. Sometimes I agree with you and sometimes I don’t. But I have to say this post is far and away the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever said or written. I do so for two reasons. First, and most obviously, Obama did nothing that other presidents haven’t done – shake the hands of tyrants, even avowed enemies of the US, act politely, and suffer the occasional diatribe. Remember the gift of the car that your old boss Nixon gave Brezhnev – even as Russian weapons were killing Americans in the paddies of Vietnam? I can only imagine the frothing at the mouth from our increasingly crazed right wing if Obama had done something remotely similar. Second, what exactly should Obama have done – walked off in a huff? As it was, his calm demeanor made the enemies of the United States look small and the US itself look like a calm and grown-up nation. If you look closely at the body language of the leaders at that summit, they were all falling all over themselves to be seen with our President. It is interesting to me that you see no connection between the anti-Russian belligerency of the Bush administration, about which you have written so persuasively, and the contrasting benefit of Obama’s rational and calm statesmanship. By what logic is Obama’s unwillingness to take the bait of his enemies a weakness instead of a great strength? Get out of your partisan mindset, Mr. Buchanan; think this through again.

With friends like Chavez and Castro in Cuba, I would immediately open statehood to Panama, Costa Rica, Guatamala, Belize, Honduras and even the northern provinces of mexico.

Central America is in great danger of anti-US instigation since the days of Carter/Reagan. In those days there was no discussion of a North American union but today, Central America needs more than a north american union…they may need outright statehood.

Gus, here is the problem with liberals. First, there are war-hawk neoliberals just like there are war-hawk neoconservatives. Second, their utopian desire to label and classify every person as if they are an object, plant or animal species in order to mathmatically create some sort of utopian society where all is fair and free has accomplished little more than a society of victimization, a dismantling of centrist and mainstream christianity, a dismantling of african american society, a society that has no moral compass on euthanasia, birth control, abortion, reproductive rights for both genders, etc. Lastly, even the social justice movement of democrats and lefties gets ossified by unions from providing cheap and efficient services for the masses to becoming political patronage machines for party members….where school boards are controlled by teachers unions, government and political parties are controlled by civil servant unions…and escalating costs are just legislated onto the taxpayer…with no efficiency to be had.

Its not a question of whether we should be a moral and a christian nation with a social safety net and social justice but the democratic/liberal way of doing it has been demonstrated to be the long term genocide of western civilization.

Winston,
It sounds like you agreed with PJB over the years when he criticized Repub’s and disagreed with him when he turned his critical eye on Dem’s.

Someone in the soup above mentioned that the anti-Americanism was a merely a show for respective leaders’ domestic audiences. In these settings, the US President is also speaking to a domestic audience, and it is listening.

Sure, shaking the hand of someone who claims the US as an enemy, or talking collegially in private meetings, does get the job done. But what does silence or snarky dismissal of anti-American theater say to the nation you are representing?

Tracey, how you reached your conclusion from the one example I gave is beyond me, but in any case you are dead wrong; I agreed with many of Pat Buchanan’s criticisms of Clinton. That said, what is puzzling to me is why Pat seems so solicitous of Russian sensitivities, for example, and wants Putin (who is consistently and vocally anti-American) treated with great respect, and yet doesn’t seem to understand why Obama wouldn’t stage a grandstanding walkout in our own hemisphere. In any case, as an American myself, I felt quite well represented by Obama’s grace, despite the temptations offered for him to descend to the level of idiots like Chavez.

Great article from Pat Buchanan.
Let every man’s sin sit on his own head. Yet the american people have nothing to apologize for morally in relations with mankind.
Yes errors of their trusted elites brought injustice and failure. Yet the American man has never done anything wrong as a identity where motives or character were involved. Yes the segregated identities in the boundaries of America but not the good old Yankee or Southerner.

These bitter comments from the losers of the cold war should satisfy one at how crushing it is to them to have lost. Excellent.
I believe America has been on the wrong side in the Israel/Arab conflict by and large. yet its not America but instead small circles of decisionmakers influenced by other small circles of agitators.
If the world had truth guiding it then they would never accept some groveling President badmouthing his people.
I am Canadian.

Yeah, our pointless invasions/occupations of Central American nations, especially Nicaragua, were very helpful to those people.

Somoza rocked, and really was excellent at making sure US aid went to his poor.

Pat, i love you man, but you’re really out on a limb when you defend US policies in Latin America as being all good for Latin Americans.

As for Obama’s reaction, it thought it was perfect, as someone else said “grown up.” I wish Bush realized that’s the best way to deal with these clowns, not but whiney outrage, but by calm “yeah whatever” attitudes.

Example, remember when Chavez effectively called Bush Satan at the UN a few years back? If, rather than whining, Bush said something like “some democrats in the US would consider that an insult against the devil” it would have made a fool of Chavez. That’s how Reagen would have handled it.

Just about the time I start to warm up to your more genuine expression of conservative (vs. “Conservative” … and heaven save us all from “NeoConservative”) ethos, you get on a rant about something wrongheaded or, worse, silly.

Let’s start with one or two social and cultural – and political – truths.

- Real tough guys don’t have to pose.

- Jingoism is not patriotism.

Guys like Gingrich, presuming their pontifications to be sincere, are cowards. They are fearful that failure to attack that with which they disagree implies weakness. So they weave arguments of justification for “preemptive war” instead of just calling it a sucker punch; and, demonize people with a calmer – sometimes more cold-blooded – demeanor as “unpatriotic” or “appeasers.”

I believe, in fact I’m sure, that you are far too intelligent and experienced not to recognize Obama’s sarcasm towards Ortega, et al. for what it was. So please quit pandering to ideologues and fools whose loyalty to conservatism is dependent on belief in a liberal Bogeyman.

I am going to thread the needle. I think it ois unconscieneable that neither US representative took a defense for the US. Tragic. The United States has been the foremost provider of foreign in Latin America’s numerous natural disasters — even those they were communist. Our programs such as the peace corps and many others, despite being populated by CIA operatives, while ill advised, still yielded favorable results by saving lives and educating thousands, who in turn educated millions.

In Latin American our guilt is deep and real, but so is the best of what makes the US neccessity on the planet. We are not by nature an evil lot, though we are not free enagaging in the support of torture and assassination. Our business goals on emore than one occassion overrode our ideals – true.

But culpability need not require some masochistic brow beating. Am I mistaken or did those petro-dollars not provide a meansto overhaul cities sewage systems, cleaner water, healthier foods, medicine and resources responsible for saving and bettering the lives of millions — I am not mistaken.

How about the thousands of NGO’s then and now are engaged in the front line work of education, environmental protection, jungle innoculation, child health and welfare, to name a few.

And perhaps, most importantly, the US cannot be held accountable for the centuries old unstable, viscious regimes ravaging the lives of their own — long before US invoilvement.

Being and adult means that Latin American must hold itself accountable for their own sins. And we need not allow ourselves to be treated as the Satan we are not. A bit schizophrenic in our policy — but Satan we are not.